Pages

A to Z Theme 2016

For my 2016 A to Z theme I used a meme that I ran across on the blog of Bridget Straub who first saw it on the blog of Paula Acton. This meme is a natural for me to use on my memoir blog. It's an A to Z concept and it's about me. No research and nothing complicated. I'm given twenty six questions or topics to discuss that are about me.

In April I kept my posts short and uncomplicated. In the midst of it all you might learn a few things about me that you didn't previously know.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

No More Phone Calls...

Lois K JacksonApril 11, 1929-November 21, 2014

When you let old routines fall by the wayside it can sometimes be difficult to get back on once familiar schedules. I've been away from regular posting on this site for nearly two months now so I figured that I might try to get things cranked back up again on Wrote By Rote. Hope readers start drifting back to this site and I can offer you some interesting stories and topics.

For anyone who might not be aware, my mother passed away on November 21st of this past year. She'd been going downhill healthwise for the past year or more and I'd been expecting her passing for some time. I'm thankful she gave us as much more time as she did though I know it was rough for her. She wasn't anxious to go and put up a good struggle. But as such things go she had to give it up eventually and the time was right for her.

My mother had turned 85 on her last birthday on April 11th. She had told us that she had expected to die in her 85th year since that was when both her mother and her one remaining sister had died. Thinking on it now it seems rather uncanny that they all died when they were 85. I don't know if it would be considered a coincidence or destiny or something like that, but that's just the way it turned out. I kept telling her that she was going to make it to 100 and she went along with that to appease me I guess, but apparently she knew better.

Now she's gone and I feel that empty place in my life where I can't call her on the phone each morning like I used to and I know that she's not going to call me if I didn't call. She'd do that. If I couldn't call her for some reason or was just late in doing so, she'd call me to see if everything was okay with me. Even though I was an old man in my 60's she still worried about me. I was her kid and I suppose she still felt some motherly obligation to take care of me. Like most parents she probably had that fear that maybe she'd outlive me. I don't think any parent wants to be around when one of their kids die.

So the situation for me now is that I don't have that go-to person to fill in the family history gaps anymore. Oh, I have my sisters and maybe even my brothers, but they don't remember a lot of the things my mother remembered. We'd have discussions about who did what and where our family was at such and such time. She'd fill in the blanks when I forgot names of people in the past and I'd prompt her with my memories that would stir up memories of her own. We had a good time telling stories and reminiscing about days gone by. Mothers can do stuff like that just about better than anyone. And now I don't have that. It just seems odd.

After she passed and I was back in Tennessee staying at the house where she and my youngest sister had lived, my sisters and I dragged out boxes of our mother's stuff to sift through them and try to fill in missing puzzle pieces. She had kept just about every card anyone had ever given her and we started playing a game to see if we could guess who had sent which card. We poured over old photographs dredging up whatever we could remember about them. My sister Joy found a treasure trove of old letters and read them aloud to us. Some were letters from my father before they had gotten married. We stepped into a time machine made of paper and ink and went back more than six decades.

We laughed. We cried. We listened with interest and occasional puzzlement as the letters revealed stories that we had never heard or perhaps had heard only in pieces. There was the voice of my grandmother's sister--my mother's aunt--crying helplessly from a nursing home wondering why she no longer heard from any other family members except my mother. There were the many condolences at the passing of my father in 1990. We had no idea that so many people had written to my mother to tell her how much my father had meant to them.

My sisters and I talked about how maybe someday we could compile all of these letters into some kind of book or family history. There is a fascinating story to be told in all of the cards, photos, and letters. For now Joy will keep these until we figure out what to do with it all. There are stories to be told and our mother is not there anymore to help us figure it all out. Now it's a matter of playing history detective on our own. I can't pick up the phone and call my mother when I need an answer. There are no more phone calls...

18 comments:

You are lucky your mom kept all that stuff. Mine has always been a relentless purger, even getting rid of my stuff when I was at school (my memory boxes appear in the 6th grade when I realized what she was doing). Sorry for your loss. It will be an adjustment for you to get used to not hearing from her anymore.

And actually there was so much more stuff that disappeared over the years. A lot of my father's stuff was discarded after he died, but by some of my siblings and not my mother. I have berated them on this on occasion and lamented the loss of some really cool stuff that I was not there to salvage. Yes, it's been weird not being able to just pick up the phone to call her. I think about it every day.

My mom was religious about making a weekly phone call to me. Usually every Saturday as she knew I'd be home early in the day. When she died, that was the oddest thing to realize there would be no more phone calls. Sorry about your mom's passing, Lee. And very nice you have letters and most of all great memories to look back on.

Thank goodness for unlimited long distance which I guess came about in the 90's? Now it seems so weird that each long distance call could cost several dollars or more, but it was an expenditure that I was willing to put into my budget. Then I was just more careful about how many calls and how long I made them. The funny thing now is that I don't make as many long distance calls now as I used to.

I think many of us wish we had asked our parents more when they were around. We often take someone's presence for granted and wait until the "right time" to ask things and then suddenly there is no more time. It's a warning to younger generations who still have parents, but of course we rarely heed those warnings either.

I know what you mean about the phone calls. I talked to my Ma every day then one day she was gone. That was 34 years ago and still there are times when I think to myself "I can't wait to call Ma and tell her..."

Lee, this is a special post. Now, I feel like I knew your mother. No matter what age we are we need our moms.

It's funny you talk about family stuff being throwing out. My daughter has bought old photographs before and displayed them in her home. Yesterday, she said, who gets rid of photographs (she bought another)? I gave her several scenarios.

Honesty: As I started reading this post, I marvelled at how well- if it's well- you were dealing with the loss. To just say, "it seemed odd", seemed odd to me. Then you got to the cards and letters and I saw better. What a marvelous treasure your mom left you! Neither of my parents were good at that sort of thing... and as I have seen things I swore were true were just mistold through the years, I would have valued something like that. My mom was 54 when she passed, so you had a marvelous treasure there, too.

Well, my mother was 85 and had some years of questionable health in the years preceding her death. We had several close calls when we thought the end was near and then it kept going. It kind of like fire drills I guess. You practice for the event and then when it comes you keep a cooler head. Also some of the after effects I don't think start hitting us until time passes and we hit the special days that we connect to our lost loved one or events we wanted them to be a part of. 54 is a young age to lose one's parent. I do consider myself very fortunate in that respect.

My heart cut in two when my mother died April 3, 2011. She was my "go to person" as well, my last connection to her ancestors. Mom listened to their stories and passed many onto me.I have those boxes in my sewing room. When I open the door, the scents of her house float out at me.Keep searching through your own boxes and letters.

Thank you, Susan. It seemed like my mother would always be around and losing her was another jolt into the reality of mortality. I'm going to try to hang on to the memories both tangible and those in my mind and pass some of those on to my kids. They loved their grandmother.

You know my dad passed in September. Like you, I've been through boxes of letters and photos and some was saved to go back through later. And now the hardest part is knowing he's not there to call or to send a picture to, and when the phone rings, it won't be him.

It's kind of weird. That sense of contact becomes so ingrained that we just think of it naturally. I can imagine that I'll continue to have that spur of the moment thought about calling my mother about something and then catching myself with the realization that I can't. Now a lot of questions will go unanswered.

Tell your story. Express your thoughts. We want to hear from you. This blog no longer accepts comments from "Anonymous"--That guy is really starting to bug this blog. If you want to leave me a comment then please register if you aren't already--it's easy to do and I really want to hear from you.

Followers

2016 A to Z April Challenge

Follow by Email

My Story

A juggler of words and phrases. My main blog is Tossing It Out. The focus blog for the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge can now be found at a-to-zchallenge.com where updates will be posted until the event in April begins.
Wrote By Rote is about memoir writing.
A Few Words is my Sunday contemplation blog.
A Faraway View is about dreams. Pick what you like or look at them all. I love blogging!